


Not Everything Dies

by incidental



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Character Death, F/F, Grief/Mourning, i hate jason rothenberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 02:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6592756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incidental/pseuds/incidental
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wrote this after 3.07 because I was thinking about what the interaction between Clarke and Murphy might be like. I hadn't intended on publishing it because it's freaking sad and our community has had enough sad as it is. But my friend wanted to read it and I figured other people might too. If you love my trash king Murphy, this is for you. I haven't seen any episodes since 3.07 so if this doesn't follow the canon, whatever, the canon sucks anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Everything Dies

**Author's Note:**

> I hate Jason Rothenberg and I hate the CW. Bonus points if you know where the title comes from. That is all.

Clarke had never seen her hands like this—outlined the opposite way, palms covered in black, lines shining out in a light peach. The way they formed the shape of a 7, starting under her index finger, swooping broad around half the width of her hand, coming to an end at the base where palm met wrist. 

“That means you’re going to live a long, happy life,” Wells had once told her, long ago, when they were children aboard the Ark. Twelve, maybe. Thirteen. Teenagers, but still just children, really. They had found an old book, something Earth children used to do long ago to amuse themselves. Some people really believed it, she supposed. Like anything, there was always someone to believe, really believe in it. She started to giggle at the thought, and when he lost his fight with his own laughter (because when Clarke laughs, everything is light and lovely, and you always laugh with her) they fell into a fit that made Abby smile. Just children.

Clarke was quite sure he was wrong now. There would be no long, happy life. She wondered what the inside of Lexa’s palms looked like. She had never noticed before—she’d traced her fingers between Lexa’s, had pressed her own palms against hers, had felt them all over her body, but had never noticed the length and shape of the lines there. 

But now, now her hands were covered in black, in ichor, the blood of a _natblida_. Lexa’s blood, that which she had tried desperately to keep in her body, to keep her spirit there with her (please stay with me oh god oh god please don’t go please oh god please), but it was of no use. For reasons escaping her—lack of medical supply, the unfortunate location of the bullet, an angry creator, the purpose was beyond her—she could not save her. She could not save her, and then she had to watch her limp body desiccated, as if she were to be stuffed and mounted like a hunted creature. 

It was too much.

Murphy stood awkwardly a few feet back, watching the horrible scene unfold before him. He may never have been academically inclined, but he wasn’t an idiot, and he realized fairly quickly what Lexa meant to Clarke. Nobody cries like that for a political ally. Nobody wails like their very own insides are being undone for a government leader. Not on the Ark, not on the ground. Nobody kisses someone like that, in the midst of blood and death, because a fraught alliance was unraveling with Lexa’s last breaths. 

There was a primal edge to the way she begged for Lexa’s life, and Murphy knew. He just knew.

He had always resented Clarke—well, maybe not Clarke specifically, but people like her. Families like hers on the Ark, Space Royalty, those whose parents were in leadership, whose children were groomed to take the metaphorical throne. The people who sat in their lounges and laughed and watched soccer games while people like Murphy scrubbed toilets and washed dishes and repaired the ever-aging station, delaying the inevitable, grubby with knowledge and the lowliness of their caste. It wasn’t Clarke’s fault that she was born into prestige, but it wasn’t Murphy’s that he wasn’t, and that was the rub that always got to him. 

Even on the ground, amongst a group of delinquents she never quite fit into, Clarke commanded respect and support without even trying. She was a natural leader, fair and brave and unwavering in her quest for a survival that was more than just that—an existence for all of them that was moral and good. And while Murphy was loath to admit it, she had saved his life, perhaps proving through her mercy that she could, in fact, attain what is peaceful and right, even in a place like this. 

Clarke elevated herself, but in this moment, this moment of sheer grief as Titus (god Murphy hated him) flipped Lexa’s dead body and cut her open, she was not elevated. She was as low and torn and grief-stricken as any human ever had been. There was no halo of holiness, no light, no throne for the princess. There was just vacancy, a weeping and gnashing of teeth (where had he heard that before?) and the sense that more than one kind of death had occurred here just now.

Titus announced the conclave and marched out of the room, Lexa’s limp body in his arms like a ragdoll dripping black, leaving a trail of droplets behind him as he slammed the doors, locking them both in the bedroom together.

In the moments after Lexa’s body was removed, Clarke let out a sound of sorrow the likes of which Murphy had never heard come from another human, and hoped never to hear again. It cut him to the quick, to the very core of his own humanity, which admittedly took some digging to find but it was there, and he felt it profoundly. She collapsed, rocking back and forth on her knees, staring down at her own palms and choking on a fit of sobs and screams and rage and sorrow. It all blended together, so that one became the other, amplifying the next, each shade of emotion quick and powerful. 

Rage. Denial. Bargaining. Rage again. Sorrow. More denial. Emptiness. Questioning. Screaming. Grief. Grief. Pain. _Bring her back. Bring her back. Oh God, oh Jesus, I don’t care who you are, just fucking bring her back._

After a moment, or an hour, a day, a century—there was no understanding time in the wake of Lexa’s death; there was no understanding anything—Clarke felt a hand tentatively settle on her shoulder. The touch was light and cautious, like he was afraid to hurt her, or incur her wrath. It was Murphy. She realized that he had never touched her before, not in a non-threatening way anyway. He had never simply extended an act of comfort to her, or anyone that she had ever heard of for that matter. She was a little startled by it, but also too numb to truly register any thoughts about it, one way or another. 

Since she didn’t bite him, he settled down on the floor next to her, at a total loss for what to say or do. Emotional sensitivity had never quite been Murphy’s wheelhouse, but he wanted to say something, do something, to alleviate the pain of the woman who had (truthfully, probably more than) once saved his life. He was, for better or worse, indebted to her forever. Beneath his bitterness—against the Ark, against her status, against the world in general—he still had gratitude, and a bizarre, twisted sense of loyalty, towards Clarke. 

“I’m…” he tried to begin, but nothing followed. What was he? Sorry? That was beyond hollow. I feel your pain? He couldn’t, he couldn’t even begin to; he had never loved anyone the way Clarke so clearly loved Lexa. Even in this short, intense moment of witness, he doubted very much that any two people had ever loved each other the way Clarke and Lexa had. It might have been the only truly good and pure thing Murphy had ever witnessed in his life, and unfortunately, he had witnessed only the cruel, bitter end of it.

Clarke said nothing, and for a while, neither did he. 

“She meant a lot to you,” he finally observed, emotions carefully guarded. There was a long pause before she responded.

“She meant everything to me,” Clarke said. Murphy was stunned by the hollowness of her voice, like all the humanity had been taken out of it. In one of their classes (human biology? Some kind of science? He hadn’t paid a lot of attention) they watched a video of a lobotomy patient being interviewed. Her speech was flat, without cadence, emotion, or a reflection of an understanding of the very basics of the human experience. That was exactly how Clarke sounded now—like something fundamental was missing, like her brain had shut down all but its most basic functions as a means of defense.

Murphy did not respond. He couldn’t. There was nothing he could contribute that would chip away even a fraction of her pain, and he knew from personal experience that those trite platitudes like “She’s in a better place”, “God works in mysterious ways”, and “Heaven gained another angel” weren’t even very useful before the world ended, when people still believed in God. Whatever god they believed in before the bombs, very little belief was left after the fact. It’s hard to believe in god when you’re standing in space, watching His creation destroyed, while His hand remained stayed and His voice remained silent. So those empty remarks would mean even less to her now.

He put his arm around her shoulders, and took his opposite hand and carefully, gently, closed it around one of her small, blood-soaked ones. He felt the dried, sticky blood between Clarke’s fingers. It stirred in him something he couldn’t quite put words to, but might, just might, have been pity.

She went rigid at first, but he didn’t let go. After a few tense moments, she began to relax her shoulders a little. They sat like this, uncomfortable as it was, until the little visible light from outside the tower disappeared, leaving them in a dark room dimly lit by a cluster of candles. They heard soft chanting grow louder, closer, and could feel the beating of drums rattling through the old structure. While the voices ringing out in Trigedasleng were muffled and hard to understand, Murphy and Clarke both knew what they were saying: Heda is dead. The Conclave will begin. Children will murder each other.

Clarke slumped over, and Murphy barely caught her in his arms. He held her close to his chest and rocked her as she took in shaking, heaving breaths and let out wails that drowned out the ritual going on beneath them. He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t. He barely felt right being there at all. His presence felt like an intrusion on some private, sacred grief, like watching a weeping god. 

She cried for hours. The candles burned low, and the sparse bit of sky visible from where they sat had filled with stars hours ago, and was now beginning to turn a lighter velvet blue. The sun was rising somewhere. Her all-night weeping had begun to slow, and her breathing, while still hitched and uneven, was slowly evening out.

It was then that he remembered something, something he had buried a long time ago—it was the day his father had been floated for stealing rationed medicine for his son. Jaha was unyielding, but Abby had apparently felt the young John Murphy’s loss personally. It was after lights out, and Murphy was lying awake in his bed in the infirmary, alone thanks to his mother of the year. When he heard Dr. Griffin’s footsteps coming, he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. The last thing he wanted was to look into the face of someone like her, one of the ruling elite, the kind of people who made rules that killed people like his father.

She didn’t keep walking past the sleeping boy’s cot, however. Instead, she knelt down beside his bed and took his hand. It took everything he had not to yank it away, but he didn’t want to betray his ruse. Under her breath, Abby recited a modified version of the blessing he had heard so many times before:

_In peace he has left this shore_  
_In love, he has found the next_  
_Safe passage on his travels_  
_Until your final journey to the ground_  
_May you meet again, John._

He suddenly realized that Clarke was not the first person on the Ark besides his father to show him compassion; her mother was.

Murphy took a deep breath in, making sure he was steady enough to even attempt to speak. He hadn’t for hours, and neither had Clarke. He wasn’t even one-hundred percent sure she was awake, except that she was still sniffling and breathing unevenly. She probably wouldn’t sleep for a long time. After Murphy’s father was floated, he didn’t sleep for days. Even his mother’s passing, as cruel of a bitch as she was, gave him a month’s worth of insomnia. And he hadn’t loved either of them the way Clarke loved Lexa. But he had to say something. He cleared his throat.

“In peace Lexa left this shore,” he began, and was surprised that his voice was not nearly as steady and cooperative as he had hoped it would be. He felt Clarke tense up slightly; she was awake, and listening. “In love… in love, she has found the next. Safe passage on her travels, until… until your final journey to… wherever. May you meet again, Clarke. I know you will.”

“How can you know?” she croaked. Murphy cleared his throat, blinking hard.

“Because… because love like that doesn’t just die. It can’t. If it did, there’d be nothing left in this miserable world worth fighting for. And what I saw… that’s worth fighting for.”

He felt Clarke take a deep, steadying breath, and finally she lifted her head to look him in the eye. They were almost nose to nose, and it was then that Clarke noticed two clean trails running down Murphy’s otherwise filthy, dirt-and-blood-caked face. 

He had been crying for her. He had been crying for her all night.

“You ready?” Murphy asked. She paused, steeled her expression, and nodded. Murphy let go of her shoulders and rose to his feet. His legs were cramped from being folded beneath him all night, arms stiff from hanging onto Clarke’s dead weight. Nevertheless, he reached down and offered her his hand. She looked down at the dried black blood crusted on her hand, drew a steadying breath, then nodded and took hold of his.

She stood.


End file.
